


Act 4: I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire

by thesecondseal



Series: More Than Smoke: A Noir AU [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Noir, Angst, Communication, Detective Noir, Dragons, F/M, Film Noir, Flirting, Kissing, Past Relationship(s), Reconciliation, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-04 02:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5317514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Essa is recruited to the Inquisition and travels to Haven chasing red lyrium leads. She finds more trouble than even she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unusual Company

**Author's Note:**

> Essa has actual friends and we flirt with Garrett Hawke and the Bechdel test.

The rain had picked up in the last hour, raging from the soft patter that had woken Garrett at dawn to an autumn storm that shook most of Lowtown. The streets were empty, but for the dirty water flooding curbs and rushing into rusted drains and the Hanged Man was full nearly to bursting with folks who would rather sit in the warm and dry and drink bad coffee than fight their way through the weather. They were lucky, Garrett thought, sweeping up the last pile of debris from his and Cullen’s earlier altercation. Another hour later and they might have had a considerable audience for the anticlimactic brawl.

He righted a fallen table, checked to see that none of the legs were broken or wobbly. The front door of the tavern banged open, the bell above jangling violently.  Garrett barely registered Isabela’s warning when a fist caught him in his already bruised face. He swung back without looking, caught an unclenched jaw with the full extension of his left cross and had a single moment of vague satisfaction before Cullen’s mumbled invective filtered through the suddenly quiet crowd.

“So she told you then.” He caught the second punch in his palm, wrapped his fingers around Cullen’s smaller fist and pulled the man toward him, pitching him off balance.

Garrett dodged the third punch. The man didn’t have bad form, but he was slower with his left.  Only Garrett’s highly contested patience kept him from knocking Cullen on his ass.

“You knew.” Cullen jerked his fist away and took a step back, facing Garrett over the remnants of their last fight.

“Of course I knew.” He glared at Cullen, waited for the other man to blink. Kept waiting. “Of course, I didn’t know she would get herself involved with the last man in all of Kirkwall that she should have, but that was my own fault. Shoulda known better.”

Cullen finally broke eye contact, reaching up to rub the tension from the back of his neck.  He opened his mouth, probably to ask one of the hundred questions Garrett could see in his eyes.

“You want answers that Essa wouldn’t give you, you’ve come to the wrong guy,” he interrupted whatever Cullen might have been about to say. “But if you want to earn them, go talk to your old boss.”

“Nalen?”

“The other one’s still dead, yeah?”

Cullen didn’t dignify his snark with a response.

“Yeah, Nalen. If you get past him, maybe I won’t feel the need to beat on you again.”

Cullen’s skepticism was plain on his busted face, and Garrett laughed. “I said maybe.”

 *

“Did you bother with an umbrella or a raincoat,” Essa demanded as Garrett stepped into her kitchen. “Or did you just think ‘sure, I’ll show up at Essa’s soaking wet and let her ogle my manly physique, that’ll cheer her up’.”

She dropped her voice to a deep swagger and the impression was closer to the mark than Garrett would have liked.

“My coat and umbrella are in the hall,” he said, tone much drier than he was. He pulled his wet shirt off over his head and tossed it in a splattering arc of water droplets to land in her kitchen sink. He flexed at her and she glared at him, but her gaze lingered enough that he could ask: “Are you cheered up?”

Essa laughed. “Marginally.” She waved at the kitchen door. “Go borrow some clothes from Fin. I’ll dry these for you after I’ve had a cup of tea.”

And calmed down enough not to torch his clothes, he thought. But Essa didn’t admit that aloud.

“You keep trying to get me out of clothes, Trevelyan. I’m starting to remember why I liked having you around.”

The smile that tugged her lips didn’t quite reach her eyes, but already she was looking better than when she had left the Hanged Man. She was still wearing his sweater, though she didn’t look quite so tossed away. She had showered, added a pair of dark leggings to the too-large stretch of crimson cotton, and she had treated a half dozen of the worst of her wounds. Her hair was almost black, still wet from her shower and slicked back from her face, emphasizing already healing bruises. She tossed him the towel from around her neck. It hit him square in one flexing pectoral.

“Go.” She pointed toward Fin’s bedroom.

Garrett dried off as best he could as he wandered through the quiet apartment she shared mostly with Fin, sometimes with her sister. Fin was the only one of the three of them who was usually there full time, but the large flat bore touches from all of them. The lavish bathroom was all Cari, fancy tub, ornate silver, way more mirrors than Essa or Fin would ever need. The main living area was Fin’s doing, though Garrett knew Essa had more than a little to do with the large, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that flanked the room’s only windows. She spent as much time sleeping on the window seat as she the bed in her room. Not that he blamed her, the room was a quiet comfort with its dark-stained oak and oxblood furniture. Walls the color of the Planasene Forest.

Fin’s room was more of the same.

“How much longer is he going to be in Starkhaven?” Garrett called, grabbing a pair of drawstring pajama pants and an a-line tank top from the second drawer of Fin’s dresser. The pants were too short and the tank was too snug, but it beat sitting in his wet clothes while she scowled at him across the kitchen.

So that last was a lie, he was too fond of that damned scowl.

“Another three weeks, I think?” Essa shouted back.

Garrett couldn’t help thinking that they would all have less mess to sort through if Fin had been around. And a lot more could go wrong in three weeks. He changed quickly, padded back to the kitchen just as Essa was placing the kettle on the stove.

The kitchen was Essa’s haven. Clean, white appliances, same dark wood from the living room, dark blue accents against flat white ceramic tile. It was the room where she felt most at home and Garrett had lost count of the number of times he and their friends had gathered around Essa’s table for food, drink, and a game of cards. If she had been happy anywhere in Kirkwall, it was here, but she was finding too little comfort in her home today.

He needed to know how much Rutherford had to answer for. If she had done the damage to her heart herself, then fine, but if Cullen had managed to get close enough to break her heart, Garrett was going to beat him bloody.

“You know,” she began, taking his wet clothes from him and dropping them in the sink. She jerked her chin toward his face. “I can’t tell which bruises are mine and which are his.”

“Most of them are yours,” he shrugged, sprawling down in the chair she nodded to as she turned back to the stove. “Rutherford’s fist is bigger, but his form’s not as good as yours.”

“His form is fine.” Essa placed her palm against the side of the tea kettle. Garrett watched the metal heat beneath her palm, too bright too fast. She nodded once in acknowledgement as the water began to boil. “He wasn’t actually trying to hurt you this morning. Last night I was.”

The kettle whistled, a short shrill scream before she pulled away, grabbing the handle to move it to a cool eye. “Do you want tea?”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. Garrett knew she needed the soothing comfort of her routine. He waited silently as she poured water into two mugs, dropped a tea bag into each. The sharp scents of peppermint and spearmint wafted across the kitchen, just a hint of vanilla beneath the bursts of green. Essa picked up the cups, crossed to the table slowly, bare feet soundless on the white tile. But for the cagey look in her grey eyes and the mint tea, Garrett might have made the mistake of thinking she was alright.

“How about you?” He made light of scrutinizing her face. “Any new ones?”

Essa raised one perfectly arched brow and slid one mug across the table to him. “Was he on fire when he showed back up at the tavern?”

Garrett laughed softly. “No. I don’t suppose he was.”

She stood behind the chair across from him, eyes on the kitchen door. She never sat with her back to an entrance and without knowing the exacts, Garrett knew that too much violence lay in Essa Trevelyan’s past.

And now she’d gotten tangled up with a blood templar.

“You really think he’s the kind?” she asked, staring down into her tea.

“To visit harm upon an out of line mage?” he returned so quickly and angrily that Essa winced.

Garrett sighed. “No,” he relented. “Not anymore, but maybe part of me is waiting for him to prove me wrong.”

He took a sip of his tea. “And maybe I’m worried that when he does, it’ll be you or Beth or Merrill that he hurts.”

“And then you’ll have to kill him,” Essa added with a sigh.

“And then I’ll have to kill him,” Garrett agreed. She paced listlessly around the kitchen, drifting out into the den. He kicked the chair out across from him when she returned. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.”

That she sat without giving him shit for his bossiness only added to Garrett’s worry. He watched her sip her tea, the mug a pale bright blue the color of the sky above her cottage. He knew it was her favorite.

He knew too blighted much about the woman.

“Essa?” Garrett took a deep breath, downed a rough gulp of too-hot tea. He could only hope that the aromatics in the tea would offer him some of the calm it seemed to bring her. His temper was fraying against the edge of her pain.

Essa glanced up from her devoted contemplation of her kitchen table.

“I need you to tell me if you’re alright,” he said, words carefully even.

“Oh!” She lifted one hand to her mouth, as if she had forgotten that he was nearly as dangerous as she was. “I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

Her voice was over-bright and Garrett wasn’t buying.

“I just—“ She sighed and stood up from her chair. “I played with fire.” She held out her hands in front of her, stared at them as if she didn’t quite recognize the bruised knuckles. “I got burned is all. I knew better. Better than most.”

She paced back toward the sink, stared out the window at the rain sluicing down the clear panes.

“If you’re that worried about me,” her teasing faltered for a moment, but she forged ahead gamely. “You could always take me to bed.”

Garrett blinked. “No.”

When she turned back to scowl at his flat refusal, he scowled right back. “Why do you want me to take you to bed? Well, you know, aside from my massive skill set.”

He leered at her and—thank the Maker!—Essa snickered.

“New memories?” She jerked one shoulder in a shrug and he watched the wide neck of his sweater slide down her arm, baring a scattering of freckles to the dusky overhead light.

“I thought you hadn’t had us both.”

It had been an accusation of Isabela’s just that morning. One that Essa had denied, and beyond the fact that Essa wasn’t one for lies, Garrett didn’t really care, but the falsehood rankled.

“Didn’t think he’d want that information shouted across the Hanged Man,” she said to the window. “Definitely certain of that now,” she added.

“Then you’re better off without him,” Garrett muttered roughly. “Anyone not proud to call themselves yours—even for a moment—doesn’t deserve your time.”

He didn’t remember moving, but suddenly he was behind her, hands on her arms, dragging her around to face him. Essa stared up at him, eyes as threatening as the stormclouds that blotted out the sun over Kirkwall.

“Do you understand?”

Essa shook her head and glanced away. “Can’t you? I’m everything he hates, Garrett.”

Garrett…not Hawke. They were straying into dangerous territory. Maybe they already had.There were a handful of very good reasons for why he and Essa had never gone beyond whatever it was they were to one another. He’d get around to remembering them later.

“If that’s true then he’s a fool. But I don’t think it is. If you’re this tangled up with Rutherford, you need to wait to see how it all plays out. If after that you still want me to take you to bed, desk, any other relatively flat surface, you just give the word.”

“I don’t think we need a relatively flat surface,” she amended with a faint smile. “But alright.”

Her lower lip trembled. Essa frowned, scrubbed the back of her hand across her mouth viciously enough to split the scab in the corner.

“Abuse.” Garrett batted her hand away in reprimand, placed the pad of his thumb against that shivering curve. He snagged a napkin from the center of the table and pressed it gently to the corner of her lips. He was going to kiss her. He would get around to cursing himself for a fool later.

“Think hard, Trevelyan.” Maybe she would have more sense than he did. “You want my mouth on yours last. Or his?”

*

Essa looked up at him in surprise. The harsh sound of their breathing seemed louder than the storm outside. She reached one hand to him, jerked it back when she saw her fingers were shaking.

“Just a kiss,” Garrett clarified. If he hadn’t sounded so serious she might have responded with something flippant, but his eyes were dark, tentative in a way she couldn’t remember seeing. “But you have to be certain.”

He was still holding the napkin to her busted lip, and she realized that he was worried about hurting her. Well, not physically of course, they’d done more with worse injuries between them. Essa covered his hand with hers. How could she not be sure? She couldn’t think of Cullen without seeing the disgust—the complete betrayal—in his tawny eyes. Couldn’t remember the feel of his lips on hers without a dozen accusations and too much regret threatening to pull her down beneath the surge of helpless fury. Garrett knew her for exactly who and what she was and still he gazed down at her with only acceptance. Only friendship. Maybe too much compassion, damn the man.

“I’m certain.”

She pulled his hand and the napkin away. Garrett nodded once, caught her beneath the chin with his knuckles and tipped her head back. The kiss was too easy. By the Mabari she wished it weren’t. His lips moved over hers, whiskey-dark and rich, a hint of burn from the thick brush of his beard against her face. His tongue skimmed her healing injuries a soft rasp that she shifted the seam of her lips against, silently asking for more. He caught her bottom lip with his teeth, pulled gently, until her whole body yielded against his broad chest. Essa groaned, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth harder against hers.

Garrett made a small sound of negation low in his throat as he pulled away.

“Just something to consider.” He winked at her.

“Ass,” Essa griped fondly, swatting him on the arm.

“I am,” he smirked. “But one without secrets.”

Before she could reply, the doorbell buzzed. Garrett put another step between them.

“That would be my sister.”

“Impeccable timing as always for the younger Hawke,” Essa observed wryly. “What’s Beth doing here?”

He shrugged. “I sent for back-up.”

“Do I seem as fragile as all that?” She frowned as she went to answer the door.

“No.” His tone might have meant ‘yes’. “But if I can’t fight your problems—“

“Or fuck them?” she added helpfully.

Garrett grunted. “I called in the big guns.”

Essa opened the front door to find Bethany and Isabela waiting on Fin’s unwelcome mat, wide grins on both their faces. Bela was wrestling with four bottles of wine and Beth was trying to get them both out of their wet coats and hats.

“Garrett, make yourself useful,” his sister ordered, taking a pair of bottles from Isabela’s hands and tossing them to him across the living room.

Essa tucked to avoid the last, then tried to pluck the remaining pair for Isabela’s arms.

“No, leave them,” she nodded to a soggy paper bag on the floor by a trio of black umbrellas. “Get the ice cream.”

“Wine,” Essa acknowledged suspiciously. “Four bottles at that and—“ she hoisted the bag in her hands. “A half-gallon of ice cream.”

She glared back over her shoulder at Garrett. “One of you get your heart broken when I wasn’t looking?”

Bethany rolled her eyes. “You can play that game if you like until my brother leaves.” She shot Garrett a glance. “You look ridiculous, by the way.”

“My clothes were wet!” he protested.

Essa laughed and stepped back to let Beth and Isabela in. “I’ll dry his clothes just as soon as everyone is out of their wet things. The two of you seem to have made the walk in better shape than Hawke did.”

“He walks too fast,” Bela declared, hanging her coat on a peg by the door. “I’d wager he stomped angrily through every puddle between here and the Hanged Man.”

“Sucker bet,” Garrett said, making all manner of noise in the kitchen as he put the wine in the refrigerator.

Essa walked in to find him snitching strawberries from a bowl on the top shelf.

“You have berries,” he accused around a mouthful.

“And cream,” she added with a sly grin, leaning over him to put the ice cream in the freezer. “We could have had a fun morning, but you opted for turning me down and sicking the ladies on me.”

Garrett groaned. “No good deed goes unpunished. Especially with you, Trevelyan. Remember that.”

“I rarely forget.”

She turned to the sink and reached for his clothes, drawing on the tempest of her magic until her hands were warm enough to burn away the wet. Her control wasn’t great, but it was better than it had been this morning. It would get better as the day progressed. She would just have to stay busy.

“Don’t eat all of Essa’s strawberries,” Bela said as she entered the kitchen. “We’re going to want those with the champagne anyway.” She mouthed the word ‘mimosas’ just as Beth sang it from the living room.

Essa tossed Garrett his dry clothes.

“Oh, good,” Beth dropped a kiss on her brother’s cheek as she joined them. “You can be going and we can spend the day getting drunk and bitching about men.”

She shooed Garrett toward the kitchen door.

“Ladies, I’m touched, I am. But I’m hardly holed up in my room listening to love done me wrong songs. Besides, I have to work tonight.”

“No you don’t,” a smoky voice said from the doorway. Essa turned in surprise to see her sister leaning in elegant curves of violet silk against the white casing. “Someone called your boss.”

Well, she thought, glancing to Garrett. He had said he called in the big guns.

“Rumor has it I’m about to be deprived of my favorite muscle,” Cari continued, shrewd grey gaze flicking from Essa to Garrett and back again. “You’re going back into the ring?”

“Considering it,” Essa admitted. “I need new contacts now that you have all my old ones.”

Cari nodded. “I’ll start interviewing for your replacements. Mr. Hawke, I feel this is something you might could help me with.”

Essa’s lips twitched.

“You can drop the ‘mister’,” Hawke said with a smile that had gotten more than one unsuspecting heart in trouble in the years that Essa had known him.

Cari arched one elegant brow. “Suit yourself, Hawke, I don’t need formalities to keep you at arm’s length, just good sense.”

Garrett covered his heart with his hands, affected a wounded look that made Essa grin.

Bela whistled appreciatively. Bethany giggled, crossing the kitchen to slip an arm around Cari’s slim waist. “Maker’s breath!” She dropped a kiss on Cari’s powdered cheek. “I do love these Trevelyan women.”

“They have their moments,” Garrett agreed. Essa could feel his gaze lingering, too soft, too sweet for either of them as he left to change.

“You know,” Bethany sighed as the door to the bathroom closed behind her brother. “I really wish we could trust that man to kill you.”

“Yes,” Essa said dryly. “It’s his only real flaw.”

“Aside from the ego,” Cari added, crossing to the kitchen table. She sank down gracefully, the ladder back chair may as well have been a throne. Essa had gotten none of their mother’s grace but Cari had gotten it all.

“I can handle the ego,” she returned easily.

“And we all know it,” Isabela snorted.

“Even the ones of us who wish we didn’t,” Beth chimed in. “Respect the sister.”

“Yes,” Cari echoed primly. “Respect the sister.”

Essa grinned and leaned back against the kitchen sink watching her friends make themselves at home in her space. Bethany prowled around as if the kitchen were hers, pulling down Cari’s prized Antivan crystal flutes as Bela brought the bowl of strawberries to the table.

“Have you had breakfast?” Essa asked. “I can make biscuits, and there’s stuff for omelets.”

“Biscuits!” Bethany nearly cheered.

“Well, now you’re just being cruel.” Garrett complained from the door. “You’re going to kick me out and then make breakfast?”

“You’ve already had breakfast,” Essa reminded him.

“Which I cooked for both of us,” he retorted.

“And then interrupted with your little display of trademark Garrett Hawke temper,” Essa groused. “You deprived me of my coffee and--”

She waved her hand to indicate the sheer mess of the morning.

“So yes, they get breakfast.”

“And we’re going to eat all the strawberries,” Bethany added with cheerful cruelty.

Garrett glared at both them, saving his darkest ire for his sister. She popped a berry in her mouth and gave him a beatific, red-stained smile.

“Anyone in particular you want to know about?” Garrett turned to Cari. “Or you just want me to send down some potentials?”

“Potentials would be nice.” Cari took a delicate sip from her champagne flute. “What do you know about the Chargers? A guy came down to the club late last night, said he worked for a qunari who goes by the name Iron Bull. Left his card, but no references.”

“Guy have a name?”

“Aclassi. Krem I believe was the first name.”

Garrett nodded. “I’ll look into it. Bull’s taken over security at Ricky’s. You want me to stop by tonight or tomorrow?”

“Tonight.” When Essa shot her a glance. Cari smiled. “We don’t all have tonight off.”

“Well I do,” Bethany informed Essa cheerfully. “And I have a late class in the morning so I could, in theory, keep you company all day.”

Essa glared at Hawke.

“You owe me,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” Essa agreed in a deadly voice. “I’ll walk you out.”

He grinned. “No need. I know the way.”

He was laughing as he left and she couldn’t help but stare after him, torn between annoyance and regret. Too many would haves and could haves. Not nearly enough should haves. Essa still wasn’t sure if life would be easier or more difficult with Garrett Hawke.

She sure as the Void wouldn’t be bored.

“Alright,” Bela broke her from her thoughts. “You finally going to tell me why Hawke didn’t put the templar in the hospital? That sad excuse for a fight this morning cost me some serious coin.”

“Ex-templar,” Essa corrected automatically. “And no.”

She turned the oven on to preheat while she began gathering ingredients for the promised biscuits. She could feel their eyes on her, didn’t want the weight of their concern amid all her other troubles.

“Did he hurt you?” Cari asked softly.

Essa sifted flour into a large mixing bowl and tried to think of the best way to say the most with the fewest words.

“Yes.” She sighed. “But not like that. One of you want to start cracking eggs?”

“On it,” Bela brought her and Essa’s drinks to the counter. She squeezed Essa’s arm as she leaned over her to get a mixing bowl from the cabinet. “You may as well start at the beginning, my dear.”

Essa laughed ruefully, paused long enough to down her mimosa. “Unless you’re going to pour me something stronger, you had best keep those coming.”

Bethany got up to fix her another drink and Essa cut cold butter into the flour in her bowl.

“I don’t actually know where the beginning is,” she admitted. “I noticed him. I wanted him. I tried to find out what I could about him and came back with too little. That should have tipped me off but it didn’t. I believed the simple story he gave Merdrat and Flissa. Thought he was a templar who’d fled the Order after all the awful went down…”

“And isn’t he?” Cari asked. Her frown was a mirror of Essa’s, but the same features had been carved with a finer hand.

“Not just any templar,” Bela sneered, egg landing with a resounding crack on the edge of her stainless steel bowl. “He was Stannard’s Knight-Captain.”

“Oh, Essa.” There was a wealth of feeling in the words, most of which Essa herself was not yet ready to face.

“Yeah…” She poured milk into  her bowl, quickly stirred together the flour and butter. “I didn’t know that until a few days ago.”

Cari nodded. “And that’s why you’re going back to fighting?”

“Among other reasons,” Essa nodded. “There’s a new lead, getting back into the fight scene will help me track it down.”

She didn’t elaborate on what that lead was, but Cari’s brief nod assured her she had already been briefed.

“So then, back to the beginning.” Bela cracked another egg a little harder than necessary and spent the next minute fishing shell fragments out of the bowl.

“I guess…” Essa took a deep breath. “The night the harbor blew.”

She glanced once at Cari in sympathy. She still didn’t know the extent of her sister’s involvement with their former boss. She had thought it all a cover, but Cari seemed to have cared for the man and that night had taken his life. “I followed Cullen to the docks and we—“

She turned her biscuit dough out onto the counter, made a show of carefully patting it down.

“You…?” Bela nudged her with the toe of her boot.

“Kissed.” Essa said too quickly. “Dammit. I forgot the pan.” She pointed her toes at the drawer beneath the oven. “One of you, please.”

Bethany hurried to oblige. “And…?” she prompted, placing the pan on the counter.

“And nothing. Merdrat and the guys showed up with some new mage. A boat came in. I left, passed by what was truly the worst covert delivery truck ever. I was waiting to tell Cullen so when…”

She shook her head.

“When everything went to fire,” Cari finished quietly.

The brass and reds were still trying to figure out what had happened. Essa had a few theories. None of them good.

“Yes,” Essa nodded, began cutting out small rounds of dough with an empty jelly jar. “Exactly. We followed Merdrat’s protocol. Caught a train to anywhere but here. Laid low. Hid out.”

“You hid out,” Cari repeated meaningfully. “Together. For three days.”

Before Essa could reply, Bethany covered her mouth with the back of one hand. Her blue eyes rounded above her open palm.

“You took him  _home_?” Bela demanded incredulously.

Essa’s cottage was something of a legend. No one except Fin was granted admission to the cottage. Cari and Isabela had never been. Essa had taken the Hawke siblings there once, and that was only because Garrett had been bleeding out in the back of a stolen car. She said nothing—very loudly—and concentrated more than she needed to on transferring biscuits to the pan.

“Es?” Cari prodded gently.

“Maybe,” she mumbled.

“Well, shit,” Bela summed up what they were surely all feeling.

“Yeah.” Essa turned to put the pan in the oven.

“And did you…?” Bela waggled her dark brows.

“Yeah,” Essa sighed and turned to the sink to wash her hands.

“How many times?” Bela asked, laughter edging the question with bawdy mirth. She had, it seemed, forgotten her hatred of Cullen for the moment.

Essa’s cheeks flushed bright and hot as she took the bowl of eggs from Bela with a scowl.

“You said this morning you hadn’t had them both,” Bela accused.

“I lied,” Essa shrugged, added salt, pepper, and dried dill to the eggs. She grabbed a whisk. “Get whatever you want to go in the omelets together, ladies.”

“Just cheese for me.” Cari leaned forward, elbows to tabletop. “Stannard’s Knight, Essa?”

There was more worry than disappointment in her voice, and Essa knew that any of the latter was born of the former.

She nodded. “Makes you feel better about Hawke now, huh?”

Cari bit her lip. She would admit to no such thing. “At least he doesn’t know you’re a mage.”

“Didn’t,” Essa corrected. Cari’s eyes flashed in alarm.

“Well, fuck.” The muttered curse was Bela’s, but Cari nodded in appreciation.

“Pretty sure that’s what got me into this mess.” Essa balanced the bowl on her hip with one hand, grabbed her refilled mimosa and took a sudden gulp.

“And Hawke?” Cari asked.  “You’re wearing his sweater.”

Essa finished her drink off, pushed the empty flute toward Bethany. “Nothing has changed with Garrett.”

She said nothing about the sweater.

“But you think Rutherford’s a better option?” Bela demanded.

“It’s not a competition,” Essa snapped, her first display nerves still simmering. “I wasn’t—I’m not looking for anything long term. It was just sex—Sorry, Cari—really amazing sex.”

“Amazing, huh?” Bela’s grin was her only apology.

“Terrifying,” Essa amended. “But amazing.”

“’Terrifying’?”

She shrugged, put the bowl on the counter and reached for a cast iron skillet, heating it with her hand rather than the stove eye.

“I’ve never…” For a moment she floundered. “Sex has always been—well, not quick, but hurried? Frenzied? Garrett and I—sorry, Beth—were always sort of immediately on fire.”

“And before Garrett?”

Essa said nothing and Isabela’s eyes widened. “Please tell me that Garret Hawke was not—“

“No!” She shook her head sharply. “But there’s no real point in mentioning before. Same old story. Girl falls in love, has sex, finds herself on fire, guy freaks out, but manages to not report her to the templars before he rejects her completely.”

“Essa.”

Bela reached for her, but she shook her head.

“Honestly, until today, I thought I was over it. Kinda hard to blame Diar. We were both young and foolish and scared to death. I’m lucky he wasn’t hurt and that he was a decent enough guy not to call the reds. After that I thought I’d be celibate for the rest of my life, but with Garrett it was just…well not emotional. Sorry, Beth.”

Beth nodded absently, drained her own glass and refilled all the empties.

Essa sighed. “Until it was.”

But they weren’t going to have that talk again.

“And with Cullen?” Beth asked.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling.” The pan in her hand was glowing red. Essa dropped it to the stove eye with a clatter. “But I know that it’s way too much.”


	2. Bare Knuckles and Brawlers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More secrets come to light as Essa and Cullen attempt to return to their lives and move forward.

The glass was well past half-empty. A finger of whiskey pooled beneath a too-large chunk of ice that Cari hadn’t bothered to break. There wasn’t any point, Cullen thought. She was just going to pour more over it later. Cullen didn’t like to over-indulge if there was a night for it, he had found one. He should have been in any other bar in the city, but Nalen had sent him back to the Tourney with a note for Essa’s sister. He didn’t know what it said, but Cari had taken one smart glance at the paper and then nodded to a stool at the end of the bar.

“Sit.”

So Cullen sat, and tried not to stare when Cari reached for the top shelf, pulled down a bottle of whiskey that easily cost as much as his suit.  He couldn’t quite get over how much alike she and Essa looked. How different their manners and dress made them. Tonight she was wearing a skirt suit, stalwart and grey, similar to those Essa favored when she was in Kirkwall. The shirt beneath was lavender silk, the shimmer casting her eyes violet, the low gather of rain clouds on the horizon. Her hair was darker, almost black in the low light. Cullen didn’t think she had ever let it down to lighten beneath the sun.

She had poured him a glass, then one for herself, and now she stood on the other side of the bar, arms crossed at her slim waist, glass in one hand, the other lifting a short jadite cigarette holder to the perfect bow of dark red lips. She took a slow drag, blew sweet-scented smoke toward the darkness above them.

“I can’t help you with Essa.” He hadn’t asked her to. Wouldn’t ask her to.

Cari nodded once, as if in reply to the unspoken insistence. Cullen took a sip of whiskey, waited her out.

“But I can get you a meeting with the Lady of Iron.”

He glanced up at her in askance and Cari pursed her lips thoughtfully on another slow inhale. She met the questions in Cullen’s gaze, but then she shook her head, exhaled smoke toward the ceiling along with whatever she had been about to say. He found himself regretting those lost words.

“She’s going to want to hire you.” Cari slid a small coin across the polished bar. On the front was the image of Andraste—it might have passed for a silver—but Cullen knew even before he turned the token over in his palm that the back was embossed with the Inquisition’s emblem. “Let her. You and I now have a standing breakfast date.”

He wished he was surprised, but no one in this blighted town was who they were supposed to be. Not even him. Cullen touched the sword and eye with the tip of one finger.

“Essa too?” he asked.

Finding out that they worked for the same institution wasn’t going to help Cullen’s trust issues, but he had to know.

Cari shook her head. “Says she’d rather deal with the demon she knows.” Her lips twisted in an almost smile. “She’s been working with Nalen for a long time, trying to change things from within.”

Once, Cullen would have said he was a hard man to shock, but it seemed everything about Essa Trevelyan was unexpected.

“Really?” he asked, taking a swallow of his whiskey. It was far too fine for a bar like this, but then, so was Cari.

So was Essa.

“Do yourself a favor, sweetheart.” She leaned forward to slowly pour another two fingers of whiskey into his glass, dropped her voice to just above the sound of ice rattling. “Go see the Lady of Iron. Figure out how you feel about her kind, but don’t, not for one minute, assume that Essa counts.”

*

“You looked like shit out there.”

Garrett didn’t say the words out loud, but he knew Essa heard them, clear as the bell that just announced her victory. She held both fists high in the air and even in the blaring lights of the arena he could tell that the tape around her knuckles was stained with more blood than her opponent’s. Still the crowd was on its feet, a dull roar which ran the chant Beserker! Beserker! Every person in the house thought Essa’s grin was them but Garrett knew she was playing a game more dangerous than boxing Ostwick’s prized welterweight.

Two months back in the ring and the woman thought she was ready for Jader. She would be lucky not to get herself killed chasing red lyrium leads through backroom deals in dirty fight clubs, but she had finally caught the right people’s attentions. They wanted her in Ferelden next month.  If she won, she would be bound for Haven and the title by Harvestmere.

She didn’t seem to care about that, though. Only answers.

“Al’right, champ, you’re wavering and we still have to get you cleaned up enough to attend your victory celebration.”

He wrapped one arm around her waist, felt her muscles bunch and shift, and knew every emotion that pressed back beneath his touch. There wasn’t another body he could read so well as his own, but Essa’s was a dead second. How they could both be in love with someone else was beyond him.

“Do I have to?” she asked, face frozen in a triumphant smile that didn’t reach her glassy eyes.

“Afraid so.” He caught her up and she squealed, one hand tangling in his hair as he slung her ass to his shoulder, braced her with one arm.

She caught her balance and sat, his arm a band across the top of her thighs. She lifted her fists again as the crowd swarmed around them. Faces turned up for the benediction of her smile, hands reaching, grasping and greedy to touch, to take with them some measure of brightness from Kirkwall’s newest champion.

She nudged him with one heel, a gentle, almost imperceptible cue against his side.

“Yes, ma’am.” Not that she could hear him over the din. Not that she needed to.

Garret pushed through the mass of well-wishers and celebrants, Essa perched high above the onslaught. She blew a kiss to her sister, and Cari reached up to catch the affection with one velvet gloved hand. She lifted her palm to her heart, then blew Essa a kiss in return, earning a fresh bout of raucous joy for their theatrics. Garrett didn’t know who the Trevelyan sisters were chasing, but he almost felt sorry for whomever waited at the end of their tangled trails. Red lyrium or not, the villain wasn’t going to stand a chance.

“Almost there.”

He could feel the battle fury leaving her. Essa leaned just a little more against him than she would ordinarily want to.  Soon the shakes would set in and she wouldn’t be fit for much beyond sitting on the floor of the shower. They reached the open entrance to the locker rooms, and Garrett nodded once, not bothering to look for eyes to meet and accept his order. Bull’s Chargers cut in, materializing as if from the noise and the smoke and the lights, brisk and efficient as they shoved back the crowd.

The sound muted almost immediately as he turned the corner and he tugged Essa down, cradled her against his chest for the last few moments he knew he had before she remembered to resist. She dragged her fingers idly through his hair with a sigh.

“You’re going to get me something to eat.”

Garrett smiled, bussed a kiss against her sweaty temple. She never ate before a fight and she always came out the other side begging for rare steak and Phil’s doughnuts.

“Just as soon as Bull gets here to guard the door,” he promised.

*

The corridor was dark; a bare lightbulb hung at the far end casting a meager circle of dull yellow light over chipped paint, cinder-block walls, and a cracked concrete floor. Upstairs the crowd was still on its feet, the thunderous roar of their approval muffled only by walls at least a foot thick.

“You can’t be down here.”

The qunari who met him outside the faded door to the locker room had Cullen by at least six inches and a hundred pounds of bulky muscle. A single eye gleamed like slate in a craggy face; its twin’s absence was hidden behind an ornate leather patch. The guard folded his arms across his massive chest, cords of muscles shifting with exaggerated menace. Cullen had watched him spar with Essa once, the last time he had tried—and failed—to gather his courage to speak with her.  The qunari wasn’t as slow as he looked, and Cullen wasn’t certain of his odds if the Iron Bull was serious.

“Move,” Cullen said, staring past him at the door.

“Boss isn’t gonna want to see you tonight, chantry boy.” There was a threat hidden beneath the unconcerned tone.

“Have you asked her that?”

“Maybe,” the Iron Bull leaned back against door, crossed his legs at the ankles and looked as if he had no intention of moving, whether in the next five minutes or five days. “Maybe I don’t need to. It was a quick fight, but ugly. She only gets like that after she’s been with you.”

Cullen’s eyes narrowed. “You think she needs protecting from me?”

“Hell, no!” The surprised bark of laughter was almost insulting. “But she has another match tomorrow. Stupid to fight two bouts back to back, but what do any of us know? Still she needs her head in the game if she’s going to keep it on her shoulders. The Vint coming in is quick. Undefeated. Boss won’t get lucky like she did tonight.”

Lucky? Cullen scoffed. She’d taken a hit that might have killed someone with a softer head. Even from the distance of his mediocre seat, Cullen had known the moment she lost her temper. Bull was right about one thing, her form had been sloppy and she couldn’t afford a repeat of tonight’s performance.

“Move,” he said again.

The Iron Bull met Cullen’s gaze, held it long enough for his own temper to cool and his resolution to be tested.

“Al’right.” Bull stepped aside. “But if she breaks your pretty face, don’t come crying to me. Club won’t pay reparations for your own stupidity.”

*

Essa was unwrapping her hands when the door creaked.  She glanced into the clouded mirror over the sink, stared past her own busted face to watch the door ease open behind her. She glared at his reflection and spat a mouthful of blood at the rusted drain when she saw Cullen walk in. His suit was a perfect press of navy wool, a seasonless flannel that cost more than her cut of tonight’s winnings. He looked about as out of place here as her sister had sitting in the front row beside him wearing sequins and furs and perfect finger waves.

“What do you want?” Essa scowled as the tape snagged against her skin, tearing already busted knuckles further.  “And how much did you pay Bull to let you through?”

She yanked the tape off, hissed at the useless waste. There wasn’t much point in the wrapping, she thought. Tomorrow, she’d fight bare. Save herself the trouble and the extra loss of skin.

“Nothing.” He stood just inside the door, a half dozen paces and flickering fluorescent light the only thing between them. She waited for him to take those steps.

“Then I should fire him,” she retorted in a carefully bored tone. “Only thing worse than a man who works for the highest bidder is one who betrays you for nothing.”

Essa didn’t wait for Cullen’s reply. There wasn’t anything he could say to make up for what he was, or the rift that placed between them, though—Mabari guard them both—she knew he was trying. She turned on the tap with a vicious twist, bent her head over the blood-stained sink to rinse her mouth beneath the faucet. Her lower lip was busted to shit, she realized as the water hit with stinging vengeance. She tilted her cheek beneath the cold, let it soothe the simmering heat around her right eye. She was lucky the blow had been glancing and Essa had no use for luck. It was a poor replacement for skill and Garrett was right, she had made an even poorer showing of hers tonight.

“You keep fighting like you are,” Cullen’s voice drifted close a moment before his hand pressed to the small of her back. “And you’re going to get yourself killed.”

Essa straightened and spun toward him, fists raised in the long perfected form she couldn’t seem to remember fifteen minutes before.  The defense was wasted. Cullen took another step into her space, and the furious movement only pushed her more closely against his chest.

“What do you want?” she repeated, teeth clamped down upon her temper.

His hands closed around her biceps and she remembered a once laughingly issued threat. They had managed a lifetime in those three days at her cottage and the two months since had not been nearly enough to mourn those lost years.

“If you shake me,” Essa ground out staring up mutinously through the dingy light. “I will kill you.”

He released her so quickly she thought she might have burned him.  Cullen stared down at her, amber eyes wounded by her fury.

“To talk,” Cullen’s voice was so much rougher than his touch and for a moment she wanted desperately to feel both moving over her skin.

Essa turned back to the sink, heard him take a quick step back. She held his eyes in the dirty mirror, summoned her erratic magic to heal the worst of her knuckles, chin lifted in a dare. He didn’t flinch.

“Talking’s not exactly one of my strong suits,” she reminded him.

Cullen smiled, the scar on his upper lip giving the expression just a hint of a sneer.  “Liar.”

Her nostrils flared once at the soft accusation and he held her gaze with too much sadness in his own.

“We just went about this all wrong.” He sighed, reached up to rub the tension from the back of his neck. “Or maybe we’re just the wrong people…”

“Bullshit,” Essa stated so sharply and suddenly that he blinked. “We are who we make ourselves. We are every choice and every chance and every change.”

If she her legs would have held her, she would have stormed past him, paced the echoing grey until her temper eased enough that she stopped picturing her hands on him. His mouth on her. What was wrong with her that she only ever wanted to kiss the men who infuriated her?

She clutched the sink until her knuckles protested. She should have been all used up, even after such a shoddy fight, but she stared down at the drain angrier now, heart rent helpless by impossible desires. Lust she could handle. Lust was like fire; it could be beaten out of her or subjected to controlled burns, but this madness with Cullen wasn’t just lust. She wanted Sunday morning breakfast in bed with him and the dogs. She wanted to make love with him on a blanket by the sea. Watch the sun gild him in shades of gold. To count stars and scars with him, to tally the costs of their daring, measure the wonder of their dreams. She wanted to know if he would silver or grey when he was older. Wanted to make sure he saw those years. And it was stupid--Maker! It was so stupid!—because she had never thought about living that long herself, much less with someone else.

“I’ll be leaving for Ferelden soon,” she told him, turning to face him.

She leaned back against the sink and hoped he couldn’t see how weak she was. She should have already been in the shower, propped up against the wall waiting for Garrett and replacement calories.

“I know,” he replied quietly.

And they both knew what sort of trouble she expected to find there.

He reached for her, fingertips grazing the worst of her bruises. Essa closed her eyes, somehow resisted the temptation to lean into his touch.

“After the party then. Meet me at my place.”

 


	3. Better To Ask Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-fight worries and Phil's doughnuts.

Essa came back into her body too quickly, the sting of battle tensing muscles not yet released from sleep’s restriction. There was a single eternity of suffocating panic when her lungs refused to take in air and her magic pooled, an immediate and deadly substitution for the gun she couldn’t quite reach.  For a moment, there were too many questions as she tried to remember where she was, who she was supposed to be.

“It’s Garrett.” His words reached her before her sleep clouded mind recognized his voice and Essa’s breath returned on a gasp. She relaxed back against his chest with a ragged sigh.

“Getting better,” she mumbled.

She hadn’t tried to kill him this time. Sex was easy, but sleeping together was dangerous at best. They had learned quickly that his attempts at comfort were better replaced with information. A dozen softly whispered “easies” and “it’s mes” were of no use when Essa woke in the grip of nightmares.

“That was almost two years ago.” He chuckled, arms tightening around her waist to hold her closer as her heartrate slowly eased back toward normal. “Do you remember where you are?”

The noise of the orchestra reached her first, then the glittering lights pressing against her closed eyelids. Essa opened her eyes carefully, blinking in the sudden onslaught. Thanks to Cari, the dance hall was barely recognizable anyway. The low light had been abandoned for crystal chandeliers, and after two days of bossing around a small contingent of fancy caterers and florists from hightown, the hall looked more like a fancy Orlesian ballroom. She and Garrett were tucked into a lovers’ nook behind a wall of staggered topiaries. She wasn’t sure how long she had slept, only that it had not been long enough.

“Shit.”

Garrett dropped a kiss on the back of her head, made no move toward releasing her. “Been a while since you spaced that bad,” he said too casually. “I would ask if you remembered that this is why you stopped fighting, but…”

“Ass.” She elbowed him in the ribs. The occasional episode of memory loss was only one of the reasons she stopped fighting. It didn’t happen often, usually only after a particularly terrible nightmare or when she woke still exhausted from post-fight sleep. She relaxed against him, waiting for her memory to finish catching up with her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Didn’t realize we were at the permission stage.” His hands swept low across her belly and she elbowed him again. “Thought you and I just asked forgiveness when we needed it.”

“Fair enough.” Essa laughed softly. “You ever going to give up on him?”

He didn’t ask who and she didn’t really expect an answer. Garrett would give up on those he cared about long after his ashes scattered to the sea.

“No.”

He took a slow breath, the rise of his chest pressing his tuxedo jacket against her bare back. Garrett was warmer than most people, and when her body dropped as deeply into sleep as she had sitting beside him on the sofa, Essa tended to cool. The fire of him was too pleasant. Too blighted easy to bask in.

He nuzzled her ear with his nose. “Pity you can’t share, Trevelyan.”

Essa snorted, the sudden merriment stinging her eyes with tears. It was the last thing she had expected him to say. “Could you?”

She caught one of his hands in hers, held them with care for her busted knuckles as she stared through the artfully shaped shrubbery at the gleaming dance floor. Dozens of couples spun over the polished black and white tile, a shimmering whirl of fine suits and sparkling dresses, deep velvets and slithering silks. On high tables, empty champagne flutes glittered, empty now of the toasts lifted in their champion’s honor. They would celebrate her victory until the sun chased them back to their beds, her presence all but forgotten and not remotely required for their gaiety.

“Of course.”

“Not me with Anders, you ass.” She pinched his thigh and his laughter rumbled against her back. Reluctantly Essa dragged herself from his arms.

“With your latest folly?” he asked as she settled against the tufted arm of the velvet sofa.

“No,” she retorted drily. “I’ve moved on from him. Thought I might give Bull a try.”

She glanced up, threw a wink at the approaching guard. “Let him introduce me to somethings beyond your skill.”

The Iron Bull’s laugh filled the alcove as he joined them, broad shoulders blocking the rest of the room from sight.

“I’d prefer the Bull,” Garrett admitted, tugging on a lock of her hair. “He’s got a certain...something.”

“Yes,” Essa winked at Bull. “Big lovely hands and all of that.”

Bull laughed again, but made no reply. “It’s just gone midnight, boss.” He held one large hand down to Essa. “You still wanting to head home?”

“I am.” She slipped her hand in Bull’s, leaned back against the balance of his strength to drop a kiss on Garrett’s scruffy cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He grunted once in agreement and Bull lifted her easily to her feet. The room spun and Essa barely kept from wobbling on her heels. She didn’t miss the concern that flashed across Bull’s eye, nor the subtle shift of Garret on the sofa behind her.

“Wait….Don’t you owe me doughnuts?” She reached her hand back to Garrett, was relieved, but unsurprised when he took the cue without argument.

“I do at that.” He let her appear to tug him to his feet.

Anyone else watching would not see how unsteady she was, only that Garrett was being his usual flirtatious self when he tucked her scowling beneath his arm. To Bull, of course, the ruse was utterly transparent.

“You sure, boss?” His concern slid low beneath the cheerful waltz, fingers still warm against hers. She was fonder than she had expected to be of the man who was more mercenary than muscle, shockingly more brain than brawn. Essa was beginning to suspect the feelings were mutual.

“I am. Garrett will see me home.” She smiled wanly. “You and the boys enjoy the rest of the party. Give Cari my love…”

She sighed with sudden remembrance. “And let Rutherford know I’m on the way home?”

They wouldn’t miss her for hours yet, but Essa was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of wondering, just blighted tired. She had been too long in Kirkwall and the city was slowly chipping away at everything she thought she knew about herself.

“Bull?”

He squeezed her fingers, stared at her too long. “Will do, boss. You call me if I need to break anyone’s legs.” He nodded at Garrett. “Even his. I wouldn’t enjoy it, but for you…”

He grinned and Essa used his hand to pull him down and herself up toward the wide expanse of his face. She dropped a kiss on her favorite scar, felt his smile lift his cheek against her lips in reply.

“You’re going with me to Jader, right?”

Garrett wasn’t, and while Essa knew it was probably the best for both of them, she had already begun to regret not having someone with her she could trust. She had come to rely too much on the man, found too great a comfort in him when her heart was breaking.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Bull said, placing her hand on Garrett’s arm. “Be careful, boss.”

He didn’t look, for one instance, as if he believed her capable of following that order. Essa smiled gamely.

“I’ll try.”

*

She didn’t argue when he had his car brought around to the front of the club, nor did she grumble when he lifted her from the sidewalk as if she were a delicate, fainting thing, the long skirt of her silver dress cascading like a water over his arm. Garrett bundled her into the front seat with a frown, watched her lean wearily against the passenger door.  

“Hand me the flashlight.”

He slid back into the driver’s seat with a nod toward the glove box not wanting to crowd her by reaching over her. Essa rolled her eyes, grimaced at the apex and grudgingly obliged.

“You already know—“ She started to bat his hand away, but Garrett mercilessly shined the flashlight in her eyes. “Maker’s breath! You—!”

“Language,” he admonished softly.

He glowered at her with mock severity, pressed his thumb to her busted lips to silence her ire. Essa’s eyes flashed with muted temper, but her pupils failed to dilate properly in the bright beam; Garrett barely refrained from growling at her. This, he remembered. This impossible obstinance. This complete disregard for herself. It was one of the reasons they would never have worked out. He worried for her more than he had ever worried for anyone save his family and of that small number, only Essa seemed determined to punish him for his foolishness.

“I think you’ll live,” he said gruffly.

He leaned across her legs to return to light to the glove box and suddenly her hands were in his hair, fingers tousling the thick locks into a lover’s disarray.

“You really do have great hair.” She mused, voice light and lilting as she dragged her nails across his scalp with a little hum of pleasure.

Garrett slammed the glove box closed with more force than necessary. “Watch your hands, Trevelyan. You’re punchdrunk and two years back.”

Essa snatched away quickly, eyes flashing wide open and bruised as he sat up. “Garrett…” she covered her mouth with her hands, shook her head once. “Maker, I’m sorry. i’m such a shit.”

“You are,” he agreed, gently pulling her hand from her face. “But in this you’re fairly innocent. I’m afraid there’ll be no more sleep for you tonight, champ.”

“But—“

And no fight tomorrow. He would wait until she was falling down tired in the morning to broach that particular subject.

“No buts. You’re lucky you woke up from that nap of yours. And I’m not entirely certain all of you has. If I had known…”

It would do no good to rail at her. That would only lead to a waste of a quiet night. Garrett had learned the hard way that Essa couldn’t be browbeaten into anything resembling good sense.  He continued toward Phil’s without further comment and she either let him stew or was too tired to argue with him. He was betting on the latter. She had been running herself ragged to get to Jader. He could only hope she would take the next week to rest.

“Garrett…” Essa’s eyes were closed again, her face turned toward the chipped faces of belligerent brownstones that lined the narrow. “I’m sorry.”

They had gone a nearly year without talking beyond the stilted conversation at Beth and Isabela’s birthdays. He had worried that Satinalia was going to be the same, but things had changed, even if he hadn’t quite figured out how or why.

“I know.” He sighed, eased his grip on the steering wheel. “You and I both suffer from being too much ourselves. We wreck things. I think that’s why I like you so much, you’re as much a mess as I am.”

She laughed then, and the sound was so forlorn that for one terrible moment, he thought she was crying.

“I’m tired of wrecking things.” She pulled her wrap more closely around her shoulders, buried her chin the soft grey fur. “I’m tired of all the secrets. I just want...”

She bit her lip. “I just want to go home, get out of this stupid dress—“

He knew what she wanted. A quiet life with her books and her garden, time to understand the magic she had been running from for so many years, but she wouldn’t take that time for herself. Not as long as Cari needed her.

“You love that dress,” Garrett reminded her. “I know. I was with you and Bela when you found it. You two had dragged me all over Kirkwall that day.”

He was testing her memory, was relieved when he glanced over to watch her smile.

“We did. But you brought that on yourself. As if I had any evening wear for your not yet assured victory gala.” Essa’s laugh was soft, weak on the edges. She settled more deeply against the seat.

“It was a done deal,” he countered. “And you know it. Starkhaven’s champ was slow that year.”

“He was,” she agreed on a yawn. “You took him down in eighteen seconds. Much better than my fight tonight. I suppose it’s fitting that you were my arm candy this evening.”

She reached for his hand, seemed to think better of it in the last moment. Her retreat fell against his knuckles, frostbite’s bitter kiss.

“Anyway, love the dress or not, I definitely want out of it and these ridiculous heels,” she fought back another yawn. “Are you going to defend those too?”

“I’m not.” He eased into a parking space a few doors down from _Phil’s Café_. “They’re horribly impractical and you can barely walk in them when you don’t have a head injury. You sure you’re up for talking to Rutherford?”

“May as well,” she shrugged. “You said I can’t go to sleep, right?”

“Right.” Garrett put the car in park, left it idling so that the engine would keep the cab warm. “I’m picking Bethy up from the hospital at six, I’ll bring her by to look at you.”

She scowled into the space before her but didn’t protest, further proof that she had taken more of a beating than she wanted to admit. “Then yeah, I may as well get this over with. We’re stopping at Phil’s?”

“Just arrived, ma’am.”

She perked up with a smile, and rolled her window down. Even over the dank Kirkwall streets, the scents of sugar and yeast dough drifted to them from up the block.

“May the Mabari smile upon you.”

Garrett chuckled. “You are far too easy to buy, you know.”

“But expensive to keep.” She mused, lifting her face toward the open window and drawing in a deep breath. “If I promise not to go to sleep, can I sit in the car?”

“Yes.” There was no way he would be able to get her inside and back out before Phil called every one of his poker buddies out of the back to congratulate her. He was going to have a hard enough time on his own as it was. “The usual?”

“Plus a half pound of that fancy Orlesian roast he’s always trying to send home with me.”

Garrett stepped out onto the street, stared back down into the car. Essa’s dress glittered, a fall of silver scales that left her arms and shoulders bare and shimmered like armor. Long black gloves slid down toward her wrists, leaving her skin dappled with murky street light and city shadows. Above the fur of her borrowed stole, Essa's eyes were smudged with artfully applied makeup that didn’t quite hide her bruises. She didn’t look like a fighter; she looked like a woman whose honor needed defending. Garrett ran his hands through his hair, returning it to some approximation of order before he closed the door between them.

Somehow he still hadn’t learned that knowing his own folly wasn’t the same as preventing it.

 


	4. Ashes Long Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters today! This wraps up Act Four and just in time for Christmas!  Follows Better To Ask Forgiveness. (also new) Cullen x Essa. Garrett Hawke. *singsong* Com-muni-ca-tion!. Speciall thanks to @slothquisitor for giving this a look and not yelling at me about Hawke. :D

The corridor was quiet, dim yellow light gliding over freshly painted wainscoting and richly patterned carpet. Roses bloomed in a wide border along a field of green that showed little wear and less dirt. Sconces were placed at regular intervals along the wide hallway, offering pools of brighter light onto gilt framed paintings by local street artists. The fourth floor of _the Rose_ was a vibrant contrast to the more affordable austerity of the first three, and felt more like a classy hotel than an apartment building. That was, of course, all Cari Trevelyan’s doing. The Inquisition might hold the title for the building, but Cari had been in charge of its refurbishment. While the rest of the building was made up of small one to two bedroom apartments like Cullen’s, the top floor was comprised of only two: the apartment that Cari sometimes shared with her sister and another roommate, and a second suite that pulled double duty as office space and an Inquisition safehouse.

Cullen paced to the window at the end of the hall, soft tread utterly muted by the thick carpet. The broken sounds of the city were far away and for a moment he was too, staring above the fog and murky streetlights toward the sky he couldn’t see, longing for the promise of stars. There was a strange certainty in standing small beneath the firmament, in knowing that there had to be more than the drugs and the blood and the ashes of corruption.

He had found no such comfort in Kirkwall.

“Oh, good!” Essa’s voice was a shade too bright as it traveled through the heavy stillness.“I told you he would already be here.”

“Yes,” Garrett answered mildly. “You’re very wise, and Rutherford is very predictable.”

Once perhaps, Cullen thought, pinching back with thumb and forefinger the pain that had settled between his eyes. But not lately. Cullen turned slowly to face them, was surprised to find that Garrett was carrying Essa. She smiled at him, eyes not quite focused. She held a large cardboard bakery box in her arms and she shook it at him gently, as if she held a precious, fragile gift.

“We stopped at Phil’s. It’s tradition.” Her head lolled back on Garrett’s shoulder, eyes closing on an impressive yawn.

“None of that,” Garrett said. He returned Cullen’s look of concern with an uncommonly serious nod toward the door to Essa’s apartment. “Key’s up on the molding, top left corner. Do you mind?”

“I can walk, Hawke,” Essa groused.

“The spills you took out of the car and up the first flight of stairs suggests otherwise,” Garrett returned dryly.

Cullen found the key just as he’d said, could only face his jealousy at such familiarity between the two of them and let it go for the unworthy annoyance that it was. There was history there. He might not know the whole of it, but the reality was plain. He wondered if they even realized the extent of their feelings for one another.

“Don’t turn on the lights,” Essa said as Cullen unlocked the door. “And stay away from the windows. I’m sure she’s out there watching.”

“She?”

Essa nodded, winced as though it hurt her head. “I think I saw the mage from the docks at Phil’s tonight. Can’t be sure,” she pointed to her temple as if that explained everything instead of only adding questions to the growing number Cullen already had.

“Acted like a fan,” Garrett added. He leveled a dark stare at Cullen. “But asked a few too many questions about your and Essa’s love life.”

“Our—What?” Cullen could feel his cheeks warming. He glanced away rather than attempt a reply.

“Your cover may be blown with us,” Essa yawned. “But certainly not with anyone else. Couldn’t have her making dangerous connections.”

“Which our champion here was no help on,” Garrett gave her a little jostle. Essa swore at him as Cullen pushed the door open. He stepped back to let Garrett and Essa precede him.  

“She’s too addled to school her expressions,” Garrett smirked. “Goes positively doe-eyed when anyone says your name.”

Essa casually passed Cullen the box she was holding.

“I will fucking kill you, Garrett Hawke.” Cullen moved just in time to avoid flailing limbs as Essa tried to get enough distance between her and Garrett to punch him. “What are we? Back in grade school?”

Garrett laughed, caught her fist in one hand tugged her close enough to whisper something in her ear that only seemed to make her angrier. He walked past Cullen and into the apartment, Essa a scowling tangle of arms, legs, and silver sequins.

“Not one word out of you,” she leveled a glare at him over Garrett’s shoulder.

Cullen held up both hands, palms out, then mimed zipping his lips. Doe-eyed, huh?

“Ready?”  Garrett asked softly, shifting a still disgruntled Essa in his arms.

“Fine,” she huffed, wrapped her legs around his waist. The high split of her dress parted, dragging the long fall of silver toward the floor and baring strong thighs. “But if you make this too convincing, I will crack at least two of your ribs.” Her legs flexed in promise. “And I will make you wait for Beth, and make you explain to her what happened.”

She was serious, Cullen thought, but there was genuine warmth behind the cool severity in her eyes.  He watched, more confused than ever, as Essa threaded her fingers through Garrett’s dark hair and leaned in close for a kiss.

“Alright,” she said, with a sigh of resignation.

Garrett’s hands splayed wide at her hips, hefting her higher on his waist than a lover’s embrace really warranted. “Kissing me such a chore now?”

Essa scowled, rubbed his nose with hers in such an unexpectedly tender gesture. Cullen glanced away.

“Mixed signals, Hawke,” she grumbled, drawing Cullen’s gaze again. “I’m not fond of sending them. Now, go.”

They were laughing as he carried her across the living room. Cullen stood in the darkened entryway as Garrett and Essa appeared to stumble to the far wall. Floor to ceiling bookshelves framed a large window seat. Heavy curtains hung open, framed the forsaken night beyond with swags of darker shadows. Garrett paused for Essa to switch on a small brass reading lamp and suddenly a halo of soft yellow light illuminated brown velvet, threw their reflections back across the cozy living room.

They suited one another, Cullen thought with a twinge of regret. A pair of fighters, both wearing their scars like jewels and badges, still smiling through the worst Kirkwall could throw at them.

Garrett dropped Essa gently to the cushion, bent to kiss her with care for her bruised lips.  She pulled him down before her, knelt to shove his coat from his shoulders, hands rushing over his back in an imitation of passion’s haste. Anyone watching the window was getting quite the shadow play.

“Tie,” he murmured, when she seemed to falter. “Dammit, Trevelyan. How bad is that head?”

Essa fumbled with his bowtie without answering, started on the buttons of his shirt, a mulish expression on her face. Garrett caught her hands in his, kissed every knuckle as she lay back on the seat before him.

“Bad enough.” She arched up, the curve of her spine a sundrenched memory and one of Cullen’s favorites. “Not the worst I’ve had.”

Garrett slid her fur wrap from her shoulders, bundling it beneath her head in a move that might have been romantic were he not obviously worried about her. He placed an almost-kiss in the valley of her throat, met the reprimand in her grey eyes with a smirk as he pulled away.  Essa sank back against the fur, arms over her head, eyes wary and watchful as Garrett finished unbuttoning his shirt.

He loved her, Cullen realized with a sick sinking in his chest.

“Light,” Essa whispered, lifting her face for another kiss.

Garrett leaned over her, body held taut. His open shirt brushed across her chest, but there was no further contact between them as he reached to click the reading lamp back off.  Essa threw out one hand, slapped it to the side of the bookshelf at her head.

“Magic,” was the only warning she gave before a dozen glyphs flashed black against the shadows of the room. Cullen felt the low pulse of enchantment, was counting the different spells when Garrett turned the light back on and sat up, dark eyes searching Essa’s expressionless face. He raised one brow in askance.

“Alright, fine,” she grumbled, head relaxing into fur. “You were almost a gentleman.”

“And you,” he caught her hands, pulled her upright. “Were almost a lady. Can I go get your mage now?”

“You can try.”

Essa glanced across the living room to where Cullen still stood leaning against the closed door. She gestured to the space.

“Apartment’s secure,” she told him. “Come on in, make yourself comfortable. I would come take your coat, but...”

The main gathering room of the apartment was a large, almost rounded space with arches and doorways on the two walls adjacent to the front door. The plaster had been painted a deep forest green, the wood trim stained dark, and everything gleamed in rich tones of brown and oxblood. Club chairs flanked a cold fireplace in one front corner, and an upright piano anchored the short wall between the open kitchen arch and a closed door. The top of the piano was littered with silver framed photographs, glass revealing only light’s reflection.

“But she can barely stand as it is,” Garrett growled, scooping her up from the window seat. “Kitchen or couch, woman? I have things to do.”

“Couch I suppose,” she sighed. “I really can walk, Garrett.”

He ignored her, dropped her lightly to the tufted leather couch that bisected the largest open space of the room. He jerked his chin at Cullen.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Beth will be by after her shift to take a look at you.” He plucked a pin from Essa’s disheveled hair and handed it to her; she turned her face up to him. “Heal your head. Don’t go to sleep. Got it?”

He glared down at her.

“Yes, you obnoxious man,” Essa swatted his hand away. “And don’t think that I missed you passing the burden of me to Cullen.”

“I’m not,” he argued. “I’m trying to catch him up quickly so that I can get out of here. Your shadow lovers will fade from the window any minute now and we don’t need your mage getting bored and running off. Be good.”

Essa snorted, called a few affectionate insults at Garrett’s back as he left. When the door closed behind him, she fell back against the couch arm, all bluster gone.

“Dear, sweet Mabari, that man drives me crazy.” She closed her eyes on a sigh, remained quiet for so long that Cullen worried she had fallen asleep.

“Essa?”

“I’m awake,” she grumbled. She held out one hand to him. “Come sit with me? I am shit at healing, could use the focus if it won’t bother you too much.”

“It won’t,” he said quickly, setting the bakery box on the entry table. “At least I don’t think it will.”

Cullen hung his coat on a peg by the door before joining Essa on the couch. Her eyes were glassy, stare just a little too vague as she pushed back an errant curl to look at him.

“What do you need?” He sat sideways facing her, a polite span of unwanted inches between them.

Essa sat up on a deeply in-drawn breath. “Just keep me talking. As long as I’m focused on something else, my magic and instincts do the work. If I think about it too much, I’ll probably singe some grey matter.”

She reached up, drew the last of the pins from her hair. Curls the color of dark walnut fell soft around her face. She covered her temples with unsteady palms.

“Should I ask you questions?” Cullen frowned. He had seen enough mages work that he knew concentration was important to their casting. This was…well, unorthodox was the mildest way of putting it. He huffed out a breath, reminded himself that he trusted her, then wondered why that was true.

“Anything you want.” Essa nodded. “We were supposed to talk anyway, right?”

She closed her eyes. “Magic,” she warned, just as she had earlier.

He felt her gentle pull on the Fade, was surprised by the rushing strength of its answer. Her hands began to glow, a warm green-gold of shimmering light trapped between her fingers.

“What was with you and Hawke and the window?”

He thought he knew, but hearing an explanation couldn’t hurt.

“Oh,” she smiled. “Garrett let my too-nosy fan think we were on again. Since she followed us from Phil’s, we thought we’d give her a little convincing. I didn’t like that she was asking so much about you. There’s a dozen enchantments on the wall over there. One to continue the natural progression of whatever our shadows showed. In this case, it would appear that the light stayed on for some time before we moved to the bedroom. I've had it also show me curled up reading in the window all night. It's handy.”

She nodded back toward a closed door behind her. “The other wards keep people from listening in on the place. No one should know that you were here.”

She massaged her scalp, light seeping into her hair and skin, the tightness around her eyes slowly fading.

“Alright,” Cullen nodded. “How bad is your head?”

“Not the worst?” she offered a shrug. “Not the best though. I was pretty out of it earlier, scared Garrett. Not that he'd admit it. He'll pout about it for the next week though. And I bet he cancels tomorrow’s fight.”

She didn’t seem terribly upset about it. Her magic hummed, lonesome and deep. The almost sound reminded him of a distant ship’s horn.

“This is helping, thank you.” She stretched out one leg, nudged his shin with the toe of her shoe. “Next?”

He smiled, though she couldn’t see it. “You and Hawke?”

Her eyes narrowed behind closed lids, but she nodded. “You may as well know, it’ll be all over the gossip rags tomorrow. We were lovers, the kind born of adrenaline, aggression, and too many nights fighting. We were not friends, not in the beginning.”

She chuckled, shook her head. “And I don't think we even know when we became so, truth be told.”

Cullen swallowed sudden nerves. “And…and now?”

“Now,” she shook her head against her hands. “Now, I’m just a silly fool. Garrett and I don’t work, Cullen. And not just because he’s in love with someone else.”

She dropped her hands with a heavy sigh.

“Remind me to do that again in about half an hour.” She reached for the buckle on her shoe, fingers stiff and clumsy.

“Would you like some help?”

“No,” Essa sighed after a moment's failure. “Doesn’t mean I don’t need it.”

She offered her foot to him warily, and Cullen took the dubious gift for what it was. She looked better, but not remotely clear-headed enough to suit. He remembered the messy fight and shook his head.

“You wanna tell me what had you fighting so sloppy tonight?”

Essa’s laughter broke, a wounded, aching thing as he carefully unbuckled her shoe. Her skin was warm beneath the thin layer of her stockings. His rough fingertips caught on the silk, left a burr to mar the smooth expanse. He murmured a wordless apology that she dismissed.

“You,” she said baldly. “Me. This whole thing. I guess I finally realized we didn’t wrong one another on purpose, but I still…I suppose I just want you to know that. I meant and mean you no ill.”

She stared past him, hands fidgeting in her lap. “And I guess, if I’m admitting my selfishness, I’d like you to know who I am beyond what you’ve no doubt read in my file.”

“I haven’t.” His voice was hoarse beneath her regard.  Cullen cleared his throat, tried again. “It just didn’t feel right. I know you can’t…do the same.”

Essa smiled thinly. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked suddenly. “I have a dozen of the best doughnuts in Kirkwall to go with it.”

She stood up, only nearly stumbled once when her stockinged feet slid on the hardwood floor. Cullen caught her elbow to steady her.

“Thank you,” she leaned into his grip, reached beneath her skirt to unhook her garters and roll the offending silk down her legs.

Cullen looked away politely, tried not to think about taking the task from her, dropping kisses on the skin exposed in the wake of his hands.

“Better,” Essa said succinctly, dropping the stockings to the couch. She pulled away from him. “Coffee?”

“Coffee,” he agreed.

Then calling himself six kinds of fool, Cullen followed her to the kitchen, coffee the very last thing on his mind.

*

Essa prowled around the kitchen, pulling down the coffee grinder and the Orlesian press that Phil insisted was the only way to prepare the fancy roast he had sent along with the doughnuts. She was definitely not thinking about how good Cullen looked in a tuxedo, or how much she wanted to unwrap him like an early birthday present. By the Mabari, he just looked like he needed mussing. He was so perfectly pressed, crisp white shirt and starched beneath the black. Golden curls staunchly corralled, brass cufflinks buffed to regulation shine...No man should look so put together. Maker’s breath, his shoes were newly polished.

She had lost half her hair pins sleeping on Garrett’s shoulder at the party. Mabari only knew where her gloves had gone. Had she left them in the car?

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Cullen asked.

"What?” His query finally caught up to her. Essa waved away his concern. “I’m fine. Head’s harder than the average.”

She rapped on her skull with her knuckles, then shooed him back into the living room for the bakery box.

“So how are things with the Lady of Iron?” she called after him.

Essa listened for his steps, knew that his tread was heavier for her sake.

“Educational.” His lips twisted in an almost smile as he walked back into the kitchen. “She has her own reasons, but we’ll be in Jader for your fight next month.”

“Reeaally?” Essa mused, dragging the word out. “Well, that’s interesting. She finally has a lead on the missing mages, then?”

“I believe so,” Cullen set the box on the counter beside her.  His breath fell against her neck and Essa closed her eyes for a fortifying heartbeat. “You smell like peppermint.”

“An oil for my shoulder,” she said, stepping aside before she forgot what little reason she had. What in the Void was wrong with Garrett that he thought leaving her alone with Cullen and a head injury was a good idea? She could still feel the gentle touch of his fingers on her ankle, had been able to think of little beyond getting him naked ever since.

She filled the kettle at the sink, put necessary strides between them as she set it on the stove.

“Magic,” she murmured, testing them both as she placed her hands against the iron, burning off some of her own heat to boil the water.

“Do you always do that?” he asked, and she could hear him going over in his mind those three days he had spent with her at the cottage.

Essa nodded. “Mostly? Just another little way of keeping the edge off. Controlled burns such as they are.”

“I meant the warning.”

“Oh,” she considered a moment. “I don’t cast around many people. Fin, Garrett, Beth, rarely around my sister. But yes, I suppose I do.”

Cullen said nothing. She watched him pace to the window, amber eyes watchful and shrewd as he searched the night.

“And no one can see in?” he asked, sounding impressed as he reached out to touch the glass. Essa made a small noise of affirmation. “That’s a very handy enchantment.”

“It is,” she agreed. “The innovations of Aubreg and our mage allies have done wonders for law enforcement. The world would be a better place if more towers worked together.”

She crossed behind him, placed one hand on the side of the coffee press.

“Magic,” she murmured, warming the pitcher.

“Were the mages in Ostwick all like you then?” Cullen asked.

Essa nearly knocked over the press. “What?”

“You’re just…” He reached up to rub the back of his neck with one hand. “I’m sorry…but, you’re not like any mage I’ve known.”

He was saved from her annoyance only by the fact that he didn’t sound as if he meant it as some great compliment.

“Ah,” Essa caught met his eyes in the windows’ wavering reflection. “I’m not, but that’s my father’s fault. He was a fighter too. The Wulfe of Ostwick, they called him. Been thirty years past now. I got my first gloves at the age of three.” She opened the coffee grinder, checked to make sure Fin hadn’t left it dirty. “Been fighting ever since. My magic, on the other hand…”

She shrugged. “I didn’t find that until about ten years ago.”

“So late?” Cullen turned to her in surprise.

“It was quite the scandal,” Essa admitted with a smile she didn’t mean. She reached for the bakery box, pulled a small bag of freshly ground coffee from the corner. “I’m shocked you didn’t hear about it.”

“I was at Kinloch Hold ten years ago,” he said.

“You--” She dropped the coffee, watched helplessly as the bag hit the floor. “You…No.”

The denial was sharp, but he didn’t take the terrible words back. “Oh, Cullen, I’m—“

“It’s…” he glanced down at the bag, bit his lip against words he wasn’t ready to give her. “It is what it is.”

He bent to retrieve the bag of coffee. “Lucky for us it didn’t break.”

Essa suspected they were talking about more than the paper bag.

“I can stop casting,” she offered, taking the coffee from him with shaking hands. “I mean, if you want.”

“No.” He shook his head. “That was some time ago. And since I left the order, those events rarely affect my waking life.”

But he would always have nightmares.

“I don’t offer this as excuse,” he said, turning from her again. “But, maybe….”

She watched his shoulders rise on a deep breath. “Maybe you can see how I went from there to the man I became here.”

“I do.”

His shoulders had tensed in anticipation of her judgment. “You…do?”

She reached for his arm, brushed questioning fingers over the sleeve of his tuxedo and waited for him to pull away. When he didn’t, Essa slowly turned him to face her.

“I do,” she repeated. “My brother was at Kinloch not long after that. Served four years before coming to Kirkwall for six terrible months. He would have been here when you were, though I doubt you remember him. He didn’t do well here. I asked Aubreg to request a transfer to Ostwick. It was too late by then, of course. He wasn’t…he wasn’t the boy I’d known after that.”

No, Mathieu Trevelyan had gone from schoolyard bully to full on sociopath. Then the monster had found a monstrous face.

“Red lyrium?”

“You guessed it.” She let him go, turned back to measure coffee beans into the grinder.

“Were you close?” Cullen asked, misreading her pain.

“No,” Essa shook her head, switched on the grinder and let the clack of the blades fill her head. When the clatter became a smooth whir, she shut the grinder off.

“He and Cari were though. I doubt she’ll ever get over our killing him.”

“You—“

She stared sightlessly down into the coffee press, measured grounds into the water, stirred them together too roughly. Coffee sloshed over the side and onto the counter.

“We had been given leave to go home for Satinalia. I guess sometime while he was at Ostwick, Matt decided I was dangerous,” she recounted the story as simply and ruthlessly as she could. “He thought cornering me at home would be better than facing Aubreg’s Pet Mage at the tower.”

Essa laughed ruefully. “He was right.”

She could feel her brother just behind her, the chill of every bitter accusation heavy against her back. He had cornered her in the kitchen, made the mistake of thinking he could fight in her weightclass. She had gotten in two good strikes before he pulled brutally on her mana. Then her body had screamed only fire and retribution.

“He hadn’t counted on Cari,” she continued tonelessly. “She put a pair of blades in the back of his neck.”

Then there had been nothing but flame. She hadn’t known then that a person could scream with so much steel in their throat. Essa closed her eyes; she could almost smell the lingering crisp of burning flesh. There was nothing in all the world like it.

Her stomach roiled, she drew a sharp breath through her nose, fingers grasping for the edge of the counter.

“Essa,” Cullen snapped his fingers sharply in front of her face. Once, twice.

She opened eyes she hadn’t known she closed, found only warmth and concern in the face of the templar before her.

“You’re here,” he said, in the clear, practical tone of one who knew what it was to constantly claw his way back from the past.

Ex-templar, she reminded herself.

Essa focused on his face, slowly nodded. “Thank you.”

Garrett was right. She needed to stop fighting. Soon.

“You want something stronger than the coffee?” he asked.

She smiled fleetingly. “No, but I’m going to eat at least half those doughnuts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This actually completes Act IV! Over the next few days I will move Hurricanes and the Haven piece over to this work. Four chapters left for Act V and Smoke will be finished!
> 
> Thank you so much for your patience while I've gotten this thing organized.


	5. Hurricanes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fin returns and storms roll into Kirkwall before Essa departs for Jader. (a continues series of drabble prompts from tumblr)

Rain clattered against the windows of  _the Tourney_ , a sharp staccato driven by another sudden gust of wind. Essa glanced toward the fragile glass wondering if they should board them up or tape them. She was mentally cataloguing their supplies when Garrett emerged from the back, a small sheet of plywood in his hands, tool belt slung around his hips.

Essa sighed. “Hawke, no.”

Garrett leered at her over the top edge of the wood, stumbled twice as he made his way through the clustered tables calling jovial enough apologies to the stranded patrons forced to scramble out of his way.

“You’re gonna have rain coming in soon, Trevelyan.” He jerked his lips at the window, winced as he scraped his chin on the rough edge before him.

“I know.” Essa rubbed at the tension between her eyes.

Already a jagged crack ran across one pane, wounded by an earlier peppering of hailstones. The storm loomed over Kirkwall, a swirl of heavy clouds spinning in from the torrent of the sea, crowding out the moons, obliterating the promise of stars. The electricity had been flickering for the past hour, but the bar was as packed as ever on a Tuesday night, the air redolent with smoke and the cold, aching notes of Grim’s saxophone.

Essa lifted her glass, finished off the final burn of amber too fine to be wasted in such a gulp.  She heard a thud, a scrape of wood against wood, then the protesting jangle of the bell above the door.

“The window is to the left, Hawke.” Her sister did not pay her enough for this. “That’s the door.”

She clunked her empty whisky glass back to the bar and stood, smoothing down the perfect lines of her new trumpet skirt and watching the night stretch before her. This was not how the evening was supposed to go. It was her birthday–not that anyone knew it besides Fin and Cari–and she was supposed to have come by, picked up her pay, and taken the train…well she hadn’t decided where. Anywhere but here sounded right though. She had one week left until Jader, and she was still too tangled up in her own head. She needed to be someone else, even if just for the night.

Essa shook her head, reached up to tug her hat pin from the careful knot of her hair before pulling the trilby down and setting it on the bar.

“Just…wait a minute,” she grumbled.

She shrugged out of her jacket and began rolling up her shirt sleeves, walking over to join him before he owed Cari an even more substantial debt in property damages than he had already racked up.

“Give me the hammer, you fool.”

Essa stepped into his space, caught Garrett’s large fist in her hand before he could finish an impressive and inaccurate swing.

“You’re too drunk for this,” she muttered, prying his fingers from the handle amid a slur of protests. She bumped him aside with one hip, caught the plywood before it could crash to her toes. “You’re going to do more damage than the storm.”

*

The woman had legs for days and right now they were more than a moderate distraction perched on top of a pair of peep-toe suede slingbacks, continental heels higher than the sensible pumps she usually wore.  The shoes were a lurid shade of blue, bright cobalt, the exact color of the velvet flower on the hat currently abandoned on the bar.  Essa’s calves flexed as she lifted up on her toes and Cullen followed the long extension of her body as she stretched up to drive a nail into the top corner of the plywood sheet Garrett Hawke was obediently holding over  _the Tourney’s_  broken front window.

“Hawke,” Essa threatened for an unseen offense. “I will use this hammer on your head.”

She reached back to scrounge ruthlessly in the pocket of Garrett’s tool belt, hips shifting within the confines of a perfectly tailored skirt Cullen had never seen. It was not her usual color, a rich dark wine that skimmed most the way down her thighs before flaring out around her knees. Was it a skirt a woman could dance in? Cullen had too little experience to know, but he also couldn’t see Essa dancing.

A blighted shame, he thought as Essa finally pulled free a handful of heavy nails. Garrett unbalanced and Essa lifted one foot, graceful as any dancer, to catch him around the calf and keep him upright.

“If you fall on me,” she snarled. “You’ll crush me.”

“Was going the other way and you know it,” Garrett groused. “But if you want me closer, sweetheart, you just have to ask.”

She released him, gave him a brief kick for his trouble before returning her foot to the floor. The flirtation wasn’t serious; Garrett kept what distance he could while his broad hands scrambled to get a better grip on the plywood. The poor man was paying for more than his own crimes tonight and there wasn’t a man or woman in the bar willing to risk Essa’s ire to rescue him.  Cullen might have felt a little sorry for him if not for the unwanted spike of jealousy currently tinting his vision green.

“If you can’t hold the damn thing still,” Essa griped, driving her elbow back toward Garrett’s navel. “Just go.”

She slapped her left hand down to hold the board in place, alternated kicks to Garrett’s shins to send him away before leaning in, dropping her left elbow against the board and lifting her right knee to catch the lower edge.

“One of us should probably go help her,” Fin said, wiping his hands on a bar towel as Garrett stumbled up and dropped onto a stool.

“Good luck with that,” he grumbled. “Curves like that…” He cast a wistful glance back over his shoulder. “Makes sense that they’re sharp.”

Sharp wasn’t the word he would use, but Cullen didn’t see any point in contradicting him. Across the bar, Essa finally got into a stance that only she would find stable. She adjusted her grip on the hammer and Cullen watched the muscles in her shoulders bunch beneath the shimmering silk of her blouse.

Fin slid a pint across the bar and Garrett gave him a grateful nod. “How long she gonna have you tending bar, man?”

He shrugged. “Until everyone goes home or the storm crushes us?”

When Flissa abandoned  _the Tourney_  amid a flurry of apologies and weather worries, Essa had immediately recruited Fin from the last sips of his second after-work pint.

“Rutherford,” Fin reached across the bar to punch Cullen lightly on the shoulder. “I appreciate that the view from here is…special…but get your ass over there.  If she tears a new skirt we’ll all suffer for it. Trust me.”

Essa tossed her head back, staring up with narrowed eyes through the smoke and the gloom. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, glared at the nail above her head as if it were an enemy and then she unleashed. The strike of her hammer was abrupt, precision ringing brightly, steel against steel to break through the noise of the storm and the persistent wail of Grim’s saxophone.

Garrett chuckled as Cullen slid from his stool. “Can you blame the man?”

“I can,” Fin said easily, but protectively enough that Cullen wondered, not for the first times in the week since he’d met the man, what his relationship was with Essa.

“I’m going,” Cullen groused, knowing neither of them would believe his feigned reluctance.

*

She knew he was there before his hand wrapped around hers, long rough fingers sliding over the back of her hand before coming to rest on the seams between hers, pressing slowly, carefully down to make space where there hadn’t been. His palm was a contrast of textures too intimate for their familiarity and Essa stared down at the alternating grip of their fingers while tension pooled too sharp, too close to trembling, in the hinge of her elbow.

He had probably known before coming over that she would be tempted to hit him with the damn hammer.

“You can hold,” she managed, lips tight around extra nails as she nodded toward the plywood before her.

“Alright.” His soft acquiescence made her that much more suspicious. She would take Hawke’s less than subtle come-ons over Cullen’s polite ambiguity any day. He leaned in, took the board’s weight from her knee with his free hand.  “Let go.”

She lowered her foot to the floor, shifted her fist restlessly beneath his hand. Slowly he released her fingers, then reached—once,  twice, three times—to pluck the nails she held tightly between her lips. She watched with unwanted captivation as he placed them between his own, until the fourth trip, when his eyes found hers and his thumb grazed her bottom lip. Essa startled, body crashing back against the cage of his as she straightened, new shoes skidding on the damp floor. 

The plywood slipped and he lunged forward to catch the board before it fell.

“Careful,” Cullen murmured around the hazards between his teeth.

He was too damn close. Essa could feel the change of temperatures in the scant air between them, smell the rain still damp in his hair, the woodsy, lemony scent of his soap. There were darker, richer notes, almost sweat, almost salt, the warmth of skin that had been worked in all day. His breath was cool on the side of her neck and she knew that only the divergent rhythms of their inhales and exhales kept any distance remaining between them.

“’Careful’?” she snarled. “Oh, you’re funny, Rutherford.”

She glanced away, stared angrily, sightlessly at the whorls in the veneer before her. Careful would be them avoiding one another for the rest of their lives. Careful would be him finding a sweet, supportive gal, settling down somewhere far from Kirkwall and filling a lakehouse full of kids and mabari whose names Essa would never know. 

“Then why aren’t you laughing?” 

The question was a low rumble, it whispered at her earlobe with the silent assurance that he already knew the answer. Essa’s breath caught at Cullen’s boldness and the small hitch was enough to align their breathing. On the next shuddering inhale, her back hit flush against his chest.

“You’re crowding me,” Essa breathed, the complaint sounding like a plea she didn’t mean.

“Then tell me to step away.”

* 

“Son of a bitch.” Fin muttered, refilling Garrett’s glass. “When did that happen?”

He nodded toward Cullen and Essa, lifted one ruddy brow in askance.  They had finished hanging the sheet of plywood across the broken window. Now she turned toward Cullen, eyes on his face, lips parted. The rest of the bar a neglected haze beyond his broad shoulders. Fin couldn’t see Cullen’s face, but the man’s posture was cause enough for alarm. He stood too close, body drawn forward over her as if shielding her from the rest of the room. That she hadn’t knocked him on his ass for the consideration was an even greater concern.

Garrett shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, Larkson.” He emptied half of his glass in one long gulp. “Probably better. I thought she told you everything.”

“Obviously not.”

They had, of course, written while he was in Starkhaven, and scheduled the occasional telephone call, but at no point had Essa mentioned…whatever the hell was going on across the bar.

Garrett laughed. “Three months is a long time to leave your woman alone,” he offered helpfully.

“Right.” Fin rolled his eyes. “I’ve told you before she’s not mine.”

“You also told me that if she needed help burying a body, you were her man,” Garrett reminded him, teeth a flash of teasing malice over the rim of his glass.

“I did,” Fin agreed.  He pulled an old-fashioned from the shelf behind the bar, poured himself two fingers of bourbon, thought better of it and poured two more. “Yours if she ever needs me.”

He shot a glance back toward the boarded window.  “What can you tell me about Rutherford?”

“Nothing you want to hear.”

Garret’s voice lowered beneath the music and Fin turned, caught Cari’s eyes and nodded once. She smiled and stubbed out her cigarette then sauntered back toward the stage. The crowd was listless, half of them more interested in the raging storm than the music in the bar, but she pecked a few notes on the quiet piano and they turned toward her with rapt attention.

“Carilyna! My love!”

There was an enthusiastic shout from the floor and Cari smiled. She was a favorite in Kirkwall, a set of pipes like an angel and lips made for sin. She classed up the joint, kept  _the Tourney_  on the right lists, and drew crowds regularly from hightown. No small feat there. 

If either of the Trevelyan sisters needed a keeper it was Cari. After two years in Kirkwall, the shadows around her violet eyes held proof of wounds both old and new; Fin worried they would never heal. But Essa?

She only carried as many bruises as she gave, and they might dapple her skin, but they never reached her eyes.

“Rutherford?” Fin asked again, now that there was sufficient distraction that he no longer feared being overheard.

Garrett tapped his glass for a refill and Fin obliged.

“Ex-templar,” he began giving Fin a moment to let the word sink in. As far as Fin knew there was no such thing as an  _ex_ -templar. The Order recruited young and the only way out that Fin had ever heard of was ashes scattered toward the sea. 

Garrett nodded. “Exactly. Merdrat hired him at Flissa’s recommendation about eight weeks back. He was with Essa the night the docks blew. He’s obviously gone for her,” he shrugged, lips twisting into a grimace of smile. “Not many around here who can blame him. He’s not the first fool to think courting death or dismemberment would be worth the prize. Merdrat’s boys gave him shit for it before Essa fired him. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s a hard one to rattle.”

Fin took a sip of his bourbon and Cari sang about love’s sad tempest.

“You’ve tried?” 

Garrett smiled. “I might have roughed him up a few times. A few more since I saw her pull a punch from him one night.”

Fin sighed. “You think he has a shot?”

“I know her better than most,” Garrett answered. “Present company excluded.”

He saluted Fin with his glass, and Fin waited.

“She’s interested,” Garrett shook his head in bemusement. “And I can’t say that I see it ending any way but bad.”

“He’s smooth,” Fin mused, watching Cullen reach for her, the back of his fingers trailing down the cream silk of her sleeve before falling away. She frowned, took a half step closer before she scowled at him and took the step back.

“Smooth?” Garrett choked on his beer. “Rutherford?” 

He plucked a clean bar towel from Fin’s apron and wiped his beard, dark eyes sparkling with humor. 

“He has no grace whatsoever.  If that chantry boy gets under Essa’s skirt, it’s because she wants him there.”

Fin glowered at him with half-hearted menace. “I told you a long time ago, Hawke, don’t talk to me about Essa’s skirts.”

Garrett laughed. “Fine. Skin. Does that help? Makes it less literal.” He took a drink, didn’t bother waiting for Fin to answer. “If Cullen Rutherford gets under her skin, it’ll be the Maker’s will or Essa’s and no one else’s.”

He lurched unsteadily to his feet. “Most likely Essa’s,” he added. “Hers is greater.”


	6. And Then There's Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and Essa’s investigations have led them from Kirkwall to Jader and finally to Haven, but every answer they find only reveals more questions. Red lyrium, missing mages, and now a dragon?
> 
> Attack on Haven.

“Cullen, can you get them out of here?”

Essa didn’t so much as glance to him for confirmation, she was too busy strapping extra ammunition–ammunition they weren’t even sure would work–to every available space on her body. There was a sawed-off 12 gauge strapped to her back, a double bandolier of dark red shells crossing the heavy leather of her trenchcoat. Between buttons left undone, Cullen could see a pair of revolvers riding low in tactical thigh holsters; he couldn’t count the number of throwing spikes snugged at her waist.

“I should be—“

She turned on him then, plucked the dagger from his belt before he could stop her and shoved it into the back waistband of her trousers. The wool wouldn’t offer her much protection, but they hadn’t exactly wandered into town looking for a fight. Much less one such as this.

“Finish that sentence,” Essa grated. “And I will put you among the injured. Then you can lead the evacuation from a stretcher.”

They both knew he was the best chance for their escape. Essa didn’t know the mountain terrain on a good day, and dawn was rolling in with a thick oppression of fog above the snow. The path through the mountains was mist and darkness choked with smoke from the burning town. There was something unnatural about the gloomy mixture coalescence, and for days, even before death rained in fire and ash, the town had moved as though haunted. Haven had been a peculiar shadow of itself when they arrived. Essa's fight had been scheduled for the middle of the day; most people had hidden in their homes after sundown. Those brave or foolish enough to venture out were too often lost in the night, the echo of footsteps vanishing with startling abruptness between the false safety of the streetlights' glow.

The weather could change on a breath in the Frostbacks, but this had smacked of weather magic, and despite Hawke's efforts the mage from the docks was still at large. Essa had been determined to find the woman herself, and they had found answers in Haven, but too many questions in the balance. Cullen never thought he’d missed the dark, damp streets of Kirkwall, but even the rough pavement and flickering street lights would have been welcome now.

Of course, then there would have just been more people to lead, more lives to destroy.

A roar of sound slammed against the barricaded doors of the chantry and the entire chapel shook in unimaginable fury. The frightened screams of those cowering within its hallowed stones stole any argument Cullen might have given Essa.

“That’s a  _dragon_  out there,” he said, the word brittle and foreign on his tongue. Magic he could almost handle, but dragons were something else entirely. Dragons were myth and legend and impossible. If they had ever existed, it was at the back of the long dark closet of history, not when man was harnessing the power of the atom. 

“I know.” Essa smiled, eyes wide with battle fervor and cheeks flushed with fight. “Can you believe it?”

The creature was something from the worst of all faerie tales. Wings and teeth and flame that stormed down upon the small, rural pilgrimage. Much of the town had already been consumed by fire; they would probably never know the death toll.

“That thing is going to devour you,” Cullen hissed, catching her by the arm and dragging her into a small antechamber off the main hall. They had come here looking for red lyrium and found…well he still didn’t know what they had found. “You saw what it did—“

“I did.” The gleam of awe in her eyes didn’t fade. “But, Cullen, how many people can say they went up against a  _dragon_?!?”

How many would want to? Cullen pretended her question was rhetorical. He wouldn’t have pegged Essa for the type, but she was as giddy at their sudden new reality as the blasted Qunari who waited at the chantry door—voice rumbling with excitement—to charge out against the beast with her.

“You’re as bad as Bull,” Cullen accused. “This isn’t a game, Essa.”

A fantasy creature was tearing through Haven like some bad monster film, and she was grinning. But this wasn’t a picture, and none of them had the slightest notion how to fight something the size of three freight cars. He was sending her to her death, and Essa? Well, the fool woman was meeting it with glee. Cullen would have given her a well-justified shake, but he was afraid he would set off something explosive.

“Hawke warned me you were trouble.” The words were a curse, but Essa only laughed. Cullen stared angrily, helplessly at the floor between them.

“I’m your only chance,” she murmured.

He dragged his gaze slowly up through the tangle of weapons spread across every available piece of real estate on her body. He wasn’t sure what was worse, the battle lust or the sobering truth that she gave him.

“You know it,” she continued quietly, arm shifting in his grip as she pulled on her gloves. “And I know it.”

The building shook again as a nearby furnace blew. “I’m quick. I’m mean. And I’ll make it hurt before it eats me. That should give you all a chance.”

She grinned up at him. “And Sera says there’s an illegal weapons cache below  _the Maiden._  She and Bull will get me there, then double back to protect your escape. If I can get my hands on a couple of M1s, maybe some grenades, I’ll bring the whole side of the mountain down on that bastard’s head.”

The chantry shook, harder this time, and a fresh round of screams rent the air.

“You have to go, Cullen. Get them to the trucks and go.”

“I know.”

If they were to have a chance, any of them, he had to get them out now, had to solve a thousand mysteries that had no place in his world.

And Essa had to charge to her glorious death.

“I’m still hoping to wake up from this.” He hauled her closer, pulled her up on her toes until her face was inches from his and every one of her weapons pressed, hard and cold and honest between them. “At home, in my perfectly dragonless world.”

She grinned, a scythe’s curve of gallows’ humor as she reached up to remove his hat.

“Mages are bad enough,” he muttered.

“I know.”

She lifted up on her toes then, pressed her mouth to his in a kiss that might have scorched had it not been so brief.

“For luck,” she teased.

Before she could step away, Cullen caught her lips again, memorized the taste of her bravado in a furious scrape of teeth and tongue and clinging. He didn’t release her until she hung breathless against him.

“For motivation,” he countered, taking the trilby from her loose fingers and placing it back on his head. “I expect you to follow us.”

“Is that an order?” she managed.

“Yes, it is.”

*

Essa couldn’t hear anything past the pounding of her own pulse. Blood surged in her ears, as loud an inexorable as the wall of snow and stone that roared like death into the Haven. The dragon was down; she had lured it from the smoke-filled sky with a few grenades to the snout, and if she’d felt a stir of pity when she saw the creature collared, it had not eclipsed her own survival. The rest was a blur of torn wings and dodging—claws, teeth, fire—constantly dodging, long enough to launch a few missiles at the unstable mountain. She probably wouldn’t have gotten away if she hadn’t managed to hamstring one of the beast’s thick, sinewy legs, but she might also not be carrying a broken arm.

She ran through the morning grey, down the long cobbled street, boots sliding over stones slick with ice and cinder. Through the heavy smoke, she could see the a sliver of the gap ahead, knew that she had exactly one shot and even fewer minutes to make it into the road tunnel before the avalanche buried her along with the town. Water spewed from an overturned hydrant, droplets freezing in the air to rain down on her, cold and coated in ash. She wished it mattered. Wished her complaint was worth anything, but the lingering fragments of the dragon’s breath meant nothing to her current state. She slipped once, caught herself against a newspaper stand with her bad elbow and bit back a scream just to save precious breath.

She nearly cried when she made it to the corner, dropping her cradled arm to grab a lamppost with her good hand, flakes of green paint chipping in a brittle confetti as she used her own momentum to swing herself up onto the narrow stretch of pavement that led to the entrance ramp. She slid across the blacktop, missed the cobbles as the newer surface gave her less traction. Abandoned automobiles cluttered the street, wheels askew and soft tops torn; one had struck the toll booth, turned on its side to block most of the tunnel entrance. Essa hoped it would slow the avalanche, give her time to make the first twist before the electricity died and she was forced to make the final mile through the mountain in the dark.

The pale yellow lights were fading in their iron cages as Essa squeezed between the abandoned cars. At first she wasn’t sure if it was the power flickering or her vision. There was blood in her eyes, and she still couldn’t quite feel her tongue. She tried to remember when she had hit her head, gave up and tried to focus on something more productive, when didn’t exactly matter. She stumbled, steps slowing to nearly useless as she finally made it into the comparative safety of the roadway. Sparks showered the gloomy interior, and the disgruntled buzz of electricity insinuated itself past the pulse in her ears, the interminable fall of mountain behind her. Up ahead concrete security curved into darkness. Impossibly far.

No, she thought. She would have to redefine what “impossible” meant. It was a new world.

“I brought down a dragon,” she muttered angrily, breath a puff of frost in the cold. “I’m not dying in a Maker-forsaken tunnel!”

She had slowed to a walk, a trudge, would have considered crawling did it not mean dragging her broken arm down the solid yellow line of the road. Somehow, just before the wall of snow struck, she made the turn, pressed her back against the inside wall and hoped the mountain didn’t shudder down on top of her.

*

“She’s here!”

Essa opened bleary eyes, stared into the weak amber cones of a pair of headlights and snarled at the hazy brightness. She wasn’t sure where she was, but below eye-level with a diesel-spewing cargo truck was not what she last remembered. She reached weakly for her gun, found only an empty holster and sighed. Now she remembered. She had thrown the Beretta at a dragon’s head. 

The fumes were thick enough that she coughed, was still coughing when strong hands dragged her up from the tunnel wall and began to briskly catalog her injuries to someone she couldn’t see.

“Get her in the truck, before she freezes,” a thin, aggravated voice yelled. Essa thought she knew that ire.

“This is going to hurt.” A voice that she didn’t want to feel like home rumbled, and then she was being lifted, broken bones grating against one another to remind her of her own mortality.

“Cullen?”

His face came slowly into focus above hers. Essa almost smiled. The man had just fled a dragon attack with a town full of terrified people and he was still wearing his hat. Of course that might have been hours ago, or days. She didn’t know.

“Did you even muss your suit?” she asked. Always so perfectly pressed, she thought, eyes sliding shut.

He chuckled. “Not even my tie,” he said, and she thought she felt his lips brush her temple.

“Cullen?” her voice was thin and floating. Essa felt the most solid she could remember. “I’m a dragon slayer.”

Her wrist sifted, bones shifting like gravel beneath her skin and her giggle became a moan.

“You are a dragon slayer,” he confirmed, as if he too were redefining the impossible.

They reached the truck, Essa couldn’t get her eyes to open, but she knew from the coughing engine and the wheeze of fuel that they were closer. She heard a door open, was passed up into the cab, settled against a seat with a broken spring. Something warm and wool settled over her, heavy and smelling of cedar and sweet bergamot. A fur collar settled against her jaw as Cullen climbed up in the driver’s seat, balanced her with his hip against hers. She fought to crack one eye open, absurdly confused by the consideration for reasons she couldn’t explain.

“I’ll get blood on your coat,” she protested.

“Take my jacket, Essa,” Cullen shook his head and Essa knew he was trying very hard not to sound patronizing. She was a dragon slayer. She was allowed to be as confused or stubborn as she wanted. She frowned, tried to form a dozen questions, but he only reached to bundle her more carefully into the long drape of burgundy wool. “It’s cold outside.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Essa retorted, as the edges of her vision grew steadily fuzzier and her lid slipped closed. “I’m a—“

“Yes, I know,” Cullen sighed. “You’re a dragon slayer.”


End file.
